[Hambone307]

May, 1944: 3 days into my patrol to CN63 I get a radar contact. After having several previously unsuccessful patrols, I figured I would take a look to see if I had a convoy. Soon my radioman notifies me of two more radar contacts. At this point the crew and I are excited, we finally have something to shoot at! I order a change of course to 180 to intercept at ahead flank. Tracking by radar, we determined that the contacts were on a course of 270 at 8 kts. About 10km away, and ahead of the convoy I ordered to periscope depth and ahead 1/3. After a few minutes the sonarman advises me of three sound contacts. At this point the crew grew silent. The sound contacts were warships, approaching fast. Soon after our sonarman lit up and started calling out merchant contacts. Everyone was reassured once we found out that we had come across a taskforce! We began setting up for a torpedo attack, keeping an ear on the warships. They appeared to be turning back to the TF so we pressed our attack. Coming up to periscope depth we set our sights on an ammunition ship, while lining up the shot everyone froze as we were hit with a sonar ping. I spun the scope around and found a DD turning on us. I ordered tubes 1, 2, and 3 fired, and sounded the alarm for emergency dive. The first set of depth charges hit us hard and destroyed the periscopes. We had severe flooding, but the crew managed to stop it. For 12 hours we were forced deeper and deeper until we had enough. One DD stayed behind keeping us under so we decided to test our luck and returned to periscope depth. Tracking him with hydrophones and getting ranges with sonar, we lined up a hail mary shot, let tube 4 loose, and waited an agonizing 25 seconds. Right on cue, we were rewarded with an explosion and the sounds of bulkheads collapsing! After waiting an hour to make sure we were clear, we surfaced to assess the damage then made a speedy return trip to Toulon to repair, rearm, and refuel. Final tally was 1 Destroyer down, and 3 misses on an ammunition ship.